Last updated on 2 May 2020
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writer’s note: After re-reading this essay several times, I realize it might appear that I am monumentally depressed and in need of immediate psychiatric assistance or that I am irrepressibly narcissistic. Perhaps I am both. My mission at the blue couch is to strive to be original and authentic. Sometimes we feel things that make us uncomfortable. But it would go counter to my mission of authenticity if I denied the sometimes occasional “bad” feelings such as deep sadness. Just as it would be inauthentic to deny the times of unbound joy. This essay is an effort to be transparent and authentic. It was what I was feeling at the time. Wholly. Fully. Unrepressed. -christian r. ward
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is what it feels like to be sad.
Really sad. Not simply that everyday kind of sad that your football team lost or your lover criticized your snoring.
It feels like the lingering ache when you’ve been punched in the stomach. A kind of deep hurt, like you’ve eaten too much ice cream or turkey. It is the kind of hurt that makes you want to curl into a ball and close your eyes so tight no light could ever escape or get in.
This is what it feels like to me to be unequivocally sad. There is a kind of lethargy and a desire to run as hard as I can at the same time. It is bewildering. A combination of feeling wrapped under a soaking and heavy woolen blanket and feeling exposed and naked. It doesn’t help that it is gray outside. And cold. It is gray and cold inside me too.
Sometimes this happens to me. Out of nowhere I am suddenly swimming in a rancorous sea. I withdraw. I go numb. I do not know exactly what will change this feeling. Forgiveness perhaps. Accepting my reality and discharging expectations definitely. Though I know expectations are deadly to the soul, I cling to them as a matter of some frail mental habit. I denigrate myself for all of my stupid decisions and weakness. I dwell on all that has gone wrong. I long for happiness, engagement, life. What I see and feel is a kind of drudgery, like being knee deep in pale, wet cement.
We all want to be loved and needed. It is a basic human desire. I want to be respected for my challenges and the little victories I have sustained along the way. I have survived difficulty too and I work hard to be humble and generous and appreciative. I work hard at gratitude, yet under the veil of my sadness I see only what I have lost.
I take another breath, feel the air passing through my nose and deep into my lungs, hoping this will reduce the ache. In truth, this present moment is all you and I have. We don’t own the past and we can’t yet command the future. This moment. This instant. In my head and with my body. A heart beat. An inhale/exhale cycle repeated a thousand times. Each breath is significant. Each breath necessary and a gift at the same time.
If I could only forgive myself. Appreciate who and what I am. Take what I can get and be thankful. This is the debate. This is what it is like to be in my head. This is what it is like to be sad.
“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
― Brian Jacques, Taggerung
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I want to share this from Facebook from one of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Kathleen Peck, essayist at It Starts With:
Your life is a set of made-up habits. You learned them, and, when talking to one of my yoga instructors the other day, he said: “want to change your personality? Just do something 1,000 times and it will feel like it’s you after a while.”
You can change, make up things you want, do new things. It’s totally up to you. Once you realize how weird you are currently–from your bathroom to eating to dropping clothes on the floor randomly–you can decide, hey, I want to be weird in a NEW way.
You can set your radio to wake you up to chants, decide to go running at 4am and then go back to bed, begin a writing habit even if you’ve never done it before, or decide to start Tae Kwon Do.
Seriously. The biggest thing holding us back is a frail set of patterns that tell us we are what we already have done.
Screw that. It’s a big open empty canvas in front of you, and you might have to scratch a little to climb out of your past, but you really can shift and change.
